Skip to main content
Main

Ham Sandwiches

A sandwich made with buttered bread, mustard, ham or cold tongue, egg, ground mustard, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Cut the bread into thin slices.

  2. Butter the slices nicely.

  3. Spread a thin layer of mustard on the buttered side.

  4. Place a slice of boiled ham or grated cold tongue between two slices of bread.

Make the ham topping

  1. Chop the old ham very fine or grate it.

  2. Beat the egg thoroughly.

  3. Mix in some ground mustard.

  4. Bring the vinegar to a boil.

  5. Stir in the egg and mustard mixture.

  6. Combine this mixture with the chopped ham.

  7. Spread the ham mixture on top.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mustard + hamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together747 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten egg thickens the mixture and binds it with the ham.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the ham.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the ham and butter.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg and mustard mixture. Egg thickens when heated and can curdle or scramble if added carelessly to hot vinegar. Adding it gradually while stirring keeps the mixture smooth.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, ham, egg, vinegar):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, ham, egg, vinegar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More ham sandwich recipes

Deviled 6Dressing 5 See all 75 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes